Step Two and Faith – Awakening Workshop – Part 16 of 18 – Local AA Speakers

a few less people here. We've got a few less people, which is at the end of the world. I mean, people are going to have them clothed. Maybe some people are gone for traffic tonight. Spring break. Could be spring break, yeah. That's true. That's sure. That's true. A couple notes. Housekeeping real quick. Next, let's see here. If you need to smoke you have to smoke off the property downstairs out in the driveway over across the area uh the bathroom is open so you're ready to go there coffee will be ready here in a second and nancy leanna might forget anything my head's like spacey today hey any other pre-announcements i don't know yeah we're i don' t know we'll just go with it so if anybody thinks of an outside should be making let me know like you know if you're i think you covered it all right good so hey how you doing oh what's that oh and the snacks are here so now now we have the priorities yeah our snacks are good all right got some folks coming in still so grab a seat um so let's see here i think we're set i'll tell you what um we're gonna do the recap of last week and then we will do our five minutes of meditation and then we will start with Leanne and Nancy tonight. Okay? And this is the second half of step two. So, if you're still feeling a little wiggy and that's a technical term being a little bit juiced inside and a little bit sideways a little bit you know maybe go through some manic depressive almost this last week of just going hot and cold and too much work and what am I doing? All that kind of stuff. You're right about where you need to be. That's just about what happens. And the reason it happens is called self is going, you're going to do what to me, you little mother? You're going try to get rid of me? Are you kidding? No way. I'm going to fight and I'm a claw and I'll scratch And then I'm going to give you all sorts of nice little comforting thoughts about how good I am for you and try to win you back. So, you know, we just went through step one. We just got through this first part of step two. And so let's look at sort of a recap, okay? And I'm pulling this right out of the BBA. I mean, Dan Shurn did such a good job in this summary. I just don't even want to try to mess with it. you know uh pages 44 to 57 and we're actually speaking tonight you guys are speaking on 51 to 58 correct okay so we're just taking a little bit of that but really this we agnostics we're going through the chapter twice right i mean we've gone through it actually three times if you really want to get at it we went through it 44 45 and 52 to take a look at the spiritual unmanageability of life. In other words, let's cut out the crazy talk. It just simply means I can't get right in my own skin inside of my own power. Anybody can relate to that? I get jacked up and everything I do to get unjacked, I can. Self-help programs, the right counselor, seeing enough friends, doing enough physical exercise, doing enough whatever you want to do, beating up enough people mentally physically whatever nothing seems to help you know going down the highway flipping people off that doesn't seem to make me feel any better i mean it's just i'm messed up i'm messed up inside unmanageability and i can never predict where my emotional uncenteredness is going to jump out next and i cant seem to keep relationships on the right track right and there's a bunch of other stuff but basically i go through this chapter the first time to look at my third part of step one the unmanageability in my life then we get to the step two really which we've been doing for the last week and now this week where we get together to look up front and close and personal with insanity the insanity behind my mind convincing me that i could go back to the drink, I could go back to the drug even after I reviewed all of the evidence that says are you freaking crazy there is no good evidence that you could use like a gentleman that you could drink like a lady there's nothing there every experience in that first step brings us to the conclusion if you're a real addict or a real alcoholic that I cannot use i cannot drink again it's got to be gone and this insanity that is not treated says oh wait a minute we could do this here's how this time it'll work insanity right so we go through it a couple times and now we were faced with this solution either god is everything or god is nothing and the dilemma is for a lot of us coming in is that this god is every thing is sort of like well i'm not even sure if i believe in god let alone god is ever and you want me to get on board with this deal i'm a little sketchy still so we go through and the first hundred were very careful to take us through it and they said we're going to go through it first time to see, we're gonna underline and color anything that helps me see the unwillingness for me to believe in God of the atheism unwilling to, underline it in a different color, what keeps me from choosing God as being everything or nothing, that's that agnosticism and that's right out of the BBA workbook on page 37 that's where I'm reading from and this unmanageability prevents me from finding the power which is really crazy in my unmanageable state i can't find the power that i need to get manageable does that make sense i gotta get rescued by a higher power that's not even my deal that's a god deal that it's going to happen to us wow um if we're having kind of trouble in our conception of god every time you see a capitalized word like supreme being creative intelligence spirit of the universe just to name a few every time you see capital letters for a regular word that's a reference to that higher power so if you get sort of freaky about the term God then use a different term but the term has to relate to your innermost self saying this is as big a power source that I could possibly imagine that if I could connect to it could possibly change my life for good and for all does that make sense? this is the one place that you have to get honest with yourself, there's one must and we have got to be able to look at that question okay, that one must let's see here backing up here they all come to me never mind, whatever hey, one of the questions on page 47 is asking us do I believe that possibly this power bigger than me can take me further in every area of my life than I'm currently at? I don't know. We're going to find out tonight. Am I willing to believe that God is out there? Am I unwilling to believe that there is a higher power? That's the first part of the question. The second part, the cornerstone, that cornerstone is saying, yeah, I'm willing to be and I'm going to believe there is an answer bigger than me that can restore me to sanity and that's that that's a cornerstone that's the archway remember this whole thing is built around that analogy or that that vision we have a foundation common problem we're alcoholics radix and we cannot physically mentally deal with this disease spiritually we don't have a solution our only solution you took away from me my only solution was a drink and when the drink started causing beyond measure problems to the nth degree where we all get or the drugs we say i gotta put it down but there's nothing to replace that comfort and ease that came immediately from doing it and now i've got to find a different path. It's either going to be alcohol, drugs, or it's going to be God. There's no middle of the road. Sorry, Alcoholics Anonymous, the big book, does not give us a third door. It doesn't say, well, there's a great self-help program and you guys are having trouble and feeling a little bit sensitive about your sensitivity, about being sensitive, then there's the door three and so come on over and let's you know we'll put up some pillows and some soft light and some mood lighting and we'll have a nice talk about how you keep self and it'll be just fine right sorry i mean usually i'm not such a you know direct ass but you know tonight i guess i am um it is the truth i'm almost done wow the last part we're going to go into our meditative last part of this, page 50 if I was to sum up that page one of the things about it is I may believe in God, I may believe in a higher power I may believe that you believe in your God and I may belief that you belief in your higher power and I may even see God doing something pretty cool in your life but there's this doubt inside of me that says I don't think God or a higher power can do that for me I'm scared to death what if I'm that one out of a million that God can't reach, won't reach shines on what if we're all in the same boat what if i'm left in this state that I can't drink and use anymore successfully. But I can live with the emotional, mental, complete unrest in my soul. And if I can find this God power, I am totally, totally screwed. So page 50 is basically saying we feel where you're coming from. We didn't believe we could get there on logic can get to their side in faith either but we found that there's a very basic way of starting to have this relationship and the first step is just be willing to be willing to believe and if we will complete the rest of this work step 2, 3 through 12 you too just like the first hundred just like Leanne just like Nancy just like me you will have a new spiritual awakening a deeper broader richer experience with god than you've ever known before i say that with authority it has never not happened and i've done the work for um conservatively probably 20 25 times one through nine plus 10 11 12 as far as getting deeper richer in this way of life it's never not worked but the odd thing is every time I go into it I think it's not going to work so if you're there you're right where you belong alright let's get into the meditation we're going to get started that's good how about that thanks Beth that was awesome All right, Nancy first? And please welcome Nancy. Hi everybody, I'm Nancy, I am a recovered cocaine and alcohol addict i apologize for not being here last week it was just one of those things i couldn't be here uh... so on page fifty-one it's been talking about material progress and um... looking at Ancient history which in fact isn't all that ancient because Galileo lived in the 1500s through the 16 Early 1600s. That's not exactly ancient history That's like Western civilization history You know pyramids are ancient history Okay, so But nonetheless, there was a lot of closed-mindedness during that period of time. They didn't call it the Dark Ages for nothing, right? So on page 51, bottom paragraph, it says, We ask ourselves this. Are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about the realm of the spirit as were the middle-aged people ancients they call them here in this book about the realm of the material right even in the present century American newspapers were afraid to print an account of the Wright brothers first successful flight at Kitty Hawk had not all efforts at flight failed before so it's certainly not newsworthy right it's gonna fail again we don't want to do that our readers aren't interested in that. So was it not true the best mathematical minds had proved that man could never fly, had not people said that God had reserved this privilege to the birds? Only 30 years later the conquest of the air was almost an old story and airplane travel was in full swing. And it's like how much doubt and prejudice do I need to have before it affects my ability to have an open mind whether it's about Galileo and and his his achievements or about airplane flight or about God right and it goes on to say but in most fields our generation has witnessed complete liberation of our thinking well wouldn't that be nice where's the evidence we had several wars after this book was written show any longshoreman a sunday supplement describing a proposal to explore the moon by means of a rocket and he'll say i bet they do it maybe not so long either is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new by the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something which knew which does those of us who watched television and the early days of television you know they had these gals dressed up in these little like maid outfits showing you the new gadget everyone had to have right so that's where that reference comes from and you know I love this next paragraph we had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems the same readiness to change our point of view is not the main problem of the alcoholic addict in our mind right so perhaps we might benefit by taking a look at what our thinking is. What do we spend our time thinking about? Is our thinking closed-minded or is it open-minded to new ideas? Do we get in fights with people who have different ideas than we do? Or, you know, where are we at with this space in between our ears? You know, what's going on in there? has not my point of view been the problem all along oh I could quit if I wanted to I just don't want to sure yeah I'm having so much fun so and now here are the bedevilments right are they're doing their best to describe this internal condition that we suffer from and not only does the internal condition, that feels really awful, that has the having trouble with personal relationships and that's going on where? Outside of ourselves. So if we're having trouble with person relationships out here we're not getting along with others, we're not playing well with others what's happening there's an internal condition going on that's creating that we're not at peace with ourselves we're at a state of unrest irritability full flight from reality we couldn't control our emotional natures were prey to misery and depression oh poor me if you had my problems you'd be miserable too maybe i'll go to the doc and get some antidepressants that'll fix it and i'm not saying anything wrong with antidegressants i've been on them from time to time myself but that attitude that point of view that there's um that i'm so overburdened with problems on the outside that I can't fix, I'm overwhelmed, I don't know how to fix them and so I feel crappy inside. Or maybe I feel crap inside first or both. So if we have then we can't make a living, maybe we can make a live but it is something you're passionate about, something you're enjoying doing Or is it just to bring home the paycheck? And I know sometimes we have to do that, but full of fear. We were unhappy, really, no kidding. With all this stuff going on, we're not exactly gonna be in a state of being happy and joy, full of joy and excited when we hear the birds in the morning. You know, the birds the morning might bring back some really awful memories of hearing those birds in the morning going damn it I can't believe it's this time here comes the Sun and I'm awake what how did this happen again and of course we can't be of real help to other people with all this stuff going on right we're not even remotely thinking about being of help to somebody else with this stuff going on because it's all about me, right? How I'm not making a living, how I feel crappy, how I think I need some medication of some kind to feel better. Or I need the boyfriend or I need job or I the money or I needed the right car or I need the right house. Leanne is going to talk about some of that stuff. So was not a basic solution of these bedevilments and i like that they call them bedevilements right we're bedeviled by this stuff we're blocked more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight you think possibly this might be more important to solve this inner condition that's like grabs us by the by the gut and kind of leads us around in our in our miserable life Yeah, that's no fun. That's no way to live. So when we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the spirit of the universe... Wow! Really? We had to stop doubting the power of God. Hmm. Our ideas did not work but the God idea did and this is a theme that this book talks about again and again and and again we're going to get into that in step two and a half heading into step three oh my ideas don't work I have to stop trying to play God not only in my life but everyone else's life and perhaps there's a better way I may not know how to do that yet but I'm hoping that this book is going to give me clear-cut directions to learn how to do that in my own life with God's help. The Wright brothers' almost childish faith, nice term, that they could build a machine which would fly was the mainspring of their accomplishment. Can you imagine these two guys going, we're going to build a flying machine. We're goingto do it. Everyone else is going, nah. It's failing. You're ending up in the river every time. Never mind. And they're going, no, no really we can do this. And they did. So without that enthusiasm and trust and faith in their possible accomplishment, they would have given up and not tried again, right? We don't want to give up. We want to go for it. Without that, nothing could have happened. We agnostics and atheists were sticking to the idea that self-sufficiency would solve our problems. When others showed us that God's sufficiency worked with them, we began to feel like those who had insisted the rights would never fly. logic is great stuff we like it right most of us like it we still like it it is not by chance we were given the power to reason to examine the evidence of our senses and to draw conclusions now later on in the book it refers to senses it refers do the sixth sense this these are the five that we're familiar with and the sixth one and perhaps other ones are God given to us they're a gift to help us maneuver in this material world so that's one of man's magnificent attributes we agnostically inclined would not feel satisfied with a proposal which does not lend itself to a reasonable approach and interpretation hence we are at pains to tell you why we think our present faith is reasonable, why we make it more sane and logical to believe than not to believe, why we say our former thinking was soft and mushy when we threw up our hands in doubt and said, well, we don't know. Have you gotten to a place where you don't know how to run your own life? You don't now if God's going to show up in your life for you, and we're kind of like on the seesaw going, hmm, I'm not quite sure. I don't know how this feels. I'm no sure I've ever been here before. Hmm, what is gonna happen? So they give us a very specific statement here. When we became alcoholics or addicts crushed by a self-imposed crisis. Oh, but I thought I had a disease and I didn't have any choice. Okay, how does self-imposed crisis fit in there? If we're unwilling to believe and at least take a look at our capacity for faith is where that comes in. To have a self-opposed crisis means I'm going for my own self-will, my own self-sufficiency till the wheels fall off right that is the problem and that's part of what's in between our ears that tells us God is not going to show up for me I can do it myself well how's that working for you so the book says we could not postpone or evade when we began to realize that we are partly crushed and broken by this self-imposed crisis this i could quit if i want to do what i don't want to thing then we can begin to ask ourselves how is it that you're sitting in this room clean and sober what happened if you have a hopeless state of mind and body and you have no power, choice or control and you're sober today do you think perhaps that power came into your life and gave you a sobriety date maybe so we need to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or he is nothing God either is or he isn't the workbook tells us that this is the second step choice it tells us this may be the last choice we make because when we make the decision to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand him we're no longer making choices we're asking for direction which is a pretty clear-cut idea about what's going to happen from now on we're going to be asking this power for direction well how do i answer this damn question i don't know oh hey god could you help me have an open mind maybe we can answer this question together because i'm not quite sure because i've never been here before and i need your help because i want to go forward i want that happiness and joy and freedom and i want to be able to transmit this information of this program to another human being that's suffering arrived at this point we were squarely confronted with the question of faith we couldn't duck the issue oh now I get to be put on the spot maybe by my self-imposed crisis damn cornered at last well the outlines and the promise of the new land had brought luster to tired eyes and fresh courage to flagging spirits maybe i've walked across the bridge of reason and i see that shore of faith over there and all those happy people how do i get there when i first worked the big book awakening when i was 16 years sober i got to this point in the workshop i was in and i'm like i don't know how to get there I've completely forgotten how to get there my conscious contact with God is gone I'm all freaked out oh my god, how could I get here at 16 years damn I need some help perhaps we've been leaning too heavily on reason that last mile and we did not like to lose our support well that was natural but let us think a little more closely without knowing it had we not been brought to where we stood by a certain kind of faith. For did we not believe in our own reasoning? Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we'd been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of reason. So in one way or another we discovered that faith had been involved all the time. So I looked up the word abject. If we're abject ly faithful to the god of reason in our own brains in our mind abject sunk to or existing in a low state or condition cast down and spirit unrealized I'm realized by any sign of independence courage or originality oh I don't want to stay there, showing utter resignation, hopeless, abjectly, in an abject manner. I want to read this real quick. It's a quote from a Buddhist nun. She says, in Tibetan, there's an interesting word, yi-tang-chi. The yi part means totally, completely, and the rest of it means exhausted. Right? Were you exhausted after your drinking or using career? Altogether, it means totally tired out. Right? It describes an experience of complete hopelessness, of completely giving up hope. This is an important point. This is the beginning of the beginning. without giving up hope that there is somewhere better to be that there's someone better to be we will never relax with where we are or who we are so when we are listening to our reasoning where are we coming from right here when we're listening to our faith where are you coming from right here so there's nothing wrong with reason we like it but as alcoholics and addicts we need to get in touch with this down here thanks my name is Leanne and I'm a recovered alcoholic I'm not recovered from this cold but I'm a recovered alcoholic hi all right thank you so much Nancy thank you Pat for the recap and Thank You Nancy for touching on this those first few pages of this work so hopefully by this point we are thank you hopefully by at this point were clear I hope everybody's clear that this is not a self-help program. Alcoholics Anonymous is not self-health. It's really clear on that. It's not therapy. We've got other places to go for therapy outside. This big book talks about that, that that's okay. But when we sit around the rooms, we're not here to talk about our problems of the week. We're here to, one of the traditions in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, is to carry the message. And I think we've heard the message over the last 10 weeks that were sickened right bodily mentally and spiritually and spiritually we've really covered that over this last the last couple weeks and what do i need i need a spiritual solution right and that is carrying the message that each deep down within each and every one of us is the fundamental idea of god and we're going to read that here in a second and do i believe that i have do i believe that god can take me further in every area of my life and do i understand that that god has to be bigger than an object and i i know that i talked about that a lot last week and it's because i think there's been some misconception about when you come into the rooms of alcoholics anonymous they tell us you could believe in whatever you want just believe than a doorknob just believe in the ocean it's okay it's a start but the big book is going to tell us it's going to crush that idea that we can believe that that is going be something that's going to take me further in every area of my life because I've seen that an ocean or an object can't take me farther in every other area of life and I have to believe in a God that I and you have to ask yourself the question, is the God that you worship something that can, a God that has your best interest at heart? Does the God you believe in have your best interests at heart. Like Nancy said, you got a God-given sobriety date, we didn't get here by any coincidences and some of us had dodged many, many bullets. You know drunk, especially drunk using I mean Think of how many times we should have been dead. I don't know about you, but even in my sober life, there's been times where I shared this story a few weeks ago. I was at the finish line of the Boston Marathon. When I crossed the finish Line 12 minutes later, that bomb went off. And had I slowed down, had I been a little bit slower, which I really should have done, And I mean, I could have been one. I might not be standing here today, literally not standing here because I might not have legs and had those guys gotten across the way, it would have been a lot more deaths had they gotten to where they wanted to go, which was underneath those bleachers, you know, and that's where they were trying to go the first time is and there would have Been a lot more deaths, but God spared some lives and I know that there were some lives that were lost, but think of that. I mean how close we've come to death in many circumstances and God's got us all here sitting in this room for a reason and a purpose. And I got to understand that there's something bigger and greater. And do I honestly believe that God has something bigger and greater for me in my life? Apparently he does because of all the times that I've been drunk, all the time that I should have died drunk using and sober and not sober. I should've been dead. All the car accidents that I got into. I can't believe how many car accidents I've been in. I've had so many car accidents. Like I'm not a good driver anyway and to be and i'm serious sober i'm not and and drunk as just you add alcohol and talk on top of a bad driver and it's just not good and i am serious and i've got gotten some very very serious accidents i've actually put people in the hospital including myself but how many times that i've done i have to see that there is an all creed that there's a creator that has my best interest at heart and does he do you have you have to believe that so am I clear um that I deserve compassion that I deserve forgiveness and that I reserve a God who can take me further in every area of my life and not just me but do you believe that because an ocean's not going to give me compassion a flower is not goingto give mecompassion but that one who created the ocean and the flower can all right so i'm going to start with this um i'm just going to read these first couple pages and as i go through this i want to discuss some of these things because this is these pages 54 and 55 are significant to me we found too that we had been worshipers what a state of mental goose flesh that used to bring on had we not various here i just talked about this have we not variously worshipped people sentiment things money and ourselves so all this time i've been talking about not worshiping things objects the big book solidifies this and just basically backs me up on this right it tells us not to do this haven't we done this it's a state of mental gooseflesh you guys are crazy to worship that where did this idea come in that we can worship a doorknob and then with a better motive had we not been worshiply had we not worshiply beheld the sunset the sea or a flower hmm okay who of us had not loved something or somebody right I can't tell you how many people I've worked with that have come in that are new in the program and I've asked them I said look I go I mean I try not to direct people's love life all right I try to stay out of it but the one relationship that we are trying to get you to build on in this program is a relationship with something that you can't see. And it's going to be really difficult when you get this other person in your life, right? Or a new love or whatever, this attraction that's going completely distract you from worshiping God, worshiping the creator. So I tell people this, if you're new in the program, this is where this this is where this comes from is that try not to get in a relationship when you first get in the program just try not to at least wait till stuff six and seven but just try Not to get in relationship because you're trying to build this relationship in this a foundation with something in a creator that you can't that's that's you can touch see or feel and you could touch see your feel as person you're going to start making that person your higher power and we do it all the time, even new in the program or not new in the program. Haven't we made people our God? You know, I can name one person right now and he happens, he's not here. He's my son. And you know, he was in the, I can talk about him because he's, he talks about this at the podium. You know he was sober and then and then he, you know he got this girlfriend and then he made the girlfriend his higher power. And I told him that. I said, you're not going to church. you're not going to meetings, you're not doing anything, she is your higher power. Oh no mom, she brings out the best in me. She makes me a better person. That's worshipping another person. One person doesn't make another person. God should be making me the better person, not my significant other, not my spouse. My spouse doesn't make me a greater person. It's very easy to worship people and we really have to take a look at that, our situations and am i making my significant other my partner my husband my spouse my my god all right how much did these things do these feelings these loves these worships have to do with pure reason little or nothing we saw at last were not these things a tissue out of which our lives were constructed did not the feelings after all determine the course of our existence it was impossible to say, we had no capacity for faith or love or worship. In one form or another, we have been living by faith and little else. Imagine life without faith. Can I imagine life without faith if I didn't have faith in anything? Right? We did this, we did the, what was it? The considerations. If God is everything and if God is nothing, right? What an awakening. If God is everything and if God is nothing, how does my life look? It wouldn't be life. We believed in life. Of course we did. We could not prove life in the sense that you could prove a straight line is the shortest distance between two points, yet there it was. Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons created out of nothing meaning nothing? Scientists will tell you nothing can't create something even scientists and by the way god and science are friends right god is not a god created science okay of course we couldn't the electrons themselves seem more intelligent than that at least so the chemist said hence we saw the reason isn't every that reason isn'T everything neither is reason as most of us see it entirely dependable though it emanates from our best minds what about people who prove that man could never fly nancy just described that right and yet it happened yet we had been seeing another kind of flight what kind of flight with this was this a spiritual liberation from this world people who rose above their problems they rose above Their problems with the help of who a creator bigger than themselves they said God made these things possible and then we only smiled how many of us have done that like I would tell my mother-in-law like she would go I'm so proud of you that you've kept yourself sober for all these years i'm like no god's done that you know i haven't done that i don't take credit for me being sober today are you kidding me if i took i can't keep myself sober and she just smiles like because i she doesn't get it right she doesn'T get it all right they said that god made these things possible and we only smiled we had seen spiritual release but like to tell ourselves it wasn't true then here's the great reality actually we were fooling ourselves this is a great reality for deep down within every man woman and child is the fundamental idea of God and I do I believe that I have to ask myself do I Believe That and I asked myself and do a little test and I've done this with little kids before I've gone up and asked little two and three-year-olds like where's God whether they have whether they were brought up with God or not, and ask kids who don't have like, you know, a spiritual family or upbringing. Ask a little kid where God is. None of them will tell you there's no God. They'll all point to their heart, or they'll point up above. Every single kid, I used to go around doing this when I first started doing this work, and I remember reading this chapter. I would like ask little kids, where's God? Do you know where God lives? God lives in my heart. Ask them. Ask your kids at if you have little kids it may be obscured by by calamity by pomp by worship of other things right society growing up this world worldly worldly clamors all of a sudden make us look want these things more than we want to seek god something that we can't see but in some form or other there there it is for faith or reliance in a power reliance on god greater than myself or ourselves and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives are facts as old as man himself. I mean, we can go back. And what they're referring here to is you go back biblically. I mean there were miracles being performed. There are miracles being preformed today. And I can't take credit for that. When you get some prayer warriors around somebody with terminal cancer and that cancer is gone, you explain that. That has to be prayer. I see it happen all the time. I see people praying over people who are sick and illnesses are gone. I see People praying over People who can't see and their blindness is gone. Don't think that God's not performing miracles today because he still performs them today and he performs them through us and us with faith. We finally saw that faith in some kind of reliance on God was part of our makeup. I just read that, didn't I? It's probably just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we have to search fearlessly, and I believe that God wants us all to have that friendship relationship. You know, we need to be open-minded with our belief systems. We do need to being very open-binded with everything, but don't be so open-mind that your brains fall out. You know? Be open- minded. Seriously. Because sometimes, you know, Don't be so open-minded that you think, you know, an inanimate object can keep you sober or can be better in your life, can help your life. But what we have to see was we have the ability to see that God, but what we can't see is we can be open-mindered enough to see that God can be a friend and God can take me in every area of my life and God can be some companion that I talk to every single waking moment of the day, but he was there he was as much of a fact as we were we found the great reality or some of us may say i i for me and this is just my experience and what i wrote in my book and it made sense to me you don't have to take it but i wrote the great instead of great reality i wrote the holy spirit is deep down within it within us and the last analysis it was only there that he capital he h e that he god may be found it was so with us so we can clear the ground a bit if our testimony helps sweep away any prejudice again it's going to ask us how many times to just sweep away prejudice right because how many of us still just want to hold on to that how many OFUS still just wants to hold onto those people that said things to us that told us that we weren't loved that told that we were good enough that told us we were going to hell that told is that we where you know that God didn't care about us And I'm here to tell you, and I'm here to be a witness to tell you that it doesn't matter who you are, what walk of life you are, that the God that the big book talks about, because I'm telling you right now, I believe in the God of the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. And that was a God that those Oxford groups wrote about. That this God loves you no matter who you are. What walk of live you come from. What you believe in. Who you are? What race? What color? What sex? Whatever you've done in your life. That he loves you, no matter what the deep that that there is but one power that one is god may you find him now and that's our big book tells us but to sweep away those prejudice set aside everything you think you know for an open mind and a new experience with god give god a chance give him a chance i'm not telling you to become religious i'm Not telling you but it's the big books making these suggestions to set it aside so that you can have a relationship with his power. So you can have a partnership that can take you further in every area of your life, not just to keep you sober. That's just the beginning, right? That's the beginning that God can help you with your finances. I mean, do I believe that? I honestly believe that. I have put all my trust in God, in my finances, in my career and I can't even tell you where I've skyrocketed to it's amazing I don't want to go there because I don'T want to talk about that and it wasn't something that I was praying for and hoping for but God took me there to a place that I've gone further in my career to where we are so comfortable today it's never happened in 54 years and I didn't come to Alcoholics Anonymous for that I didn' t know that I was going to get that I came here because I couldn' t quit drinking I didn''t come here for a relationship with God but I ended up getting a bigger and better relationship with God than I ever got sitting in a church sitting anywhere else and this combined with my faith has rocketed me into that fourth dimension of existence that the book talks about so sweep away prejudice which enables you to think honestly encourages your search to search diligently within yourself then if you wish you can join us on the broad highway join who these the original the original hundred men and women you know on this broad highway with this attitude and this attitude if we go over to page 86 the attitude is in um in the in the 11th step it says it works if we have the proper attitude and we work at it and that proper attitude is is this to sweep away prejudice and to rely on this god with this attitude you cannot fail the consciousness of your belief is sure to come The next part of this, the next few pages, I don't want to go into it. I'm sure you guys read the story. It talks about a minister's son who was an atheist. I think that's funny because I know a lot of pastors' kids that are heathens and crazy kids. But isn't it funny that they're the most rebellious? They're the Most Rebellious because they're given, here's how you're going to believe and you need to believe this way instead of them being able to go out and find on their own. Do their own research, you know? We have the freedom to do our own research. And that's, you Know, I challenge you to do that. But here was a kid, You know, who was rebellious and fought against God. I don't think he... If they're saying that he's atheist, he can't fight against something that he doesn't believe in. But he does say this one statement, and I want to read this. It's in the middle of the page, page 56. it says, if there is a God, he certainly hasn't done anything for me. And I wonder how many of us go through that with that attitude, you know, of like, what has God done for me? And the question isn't what has got done for Me, but what have I done for God? You know, what is it that I have done for god? And and that's the question that we need to ask ourselves. But then he goes into saying, obviously, he has this spiritual awakening. and then he says who is he to say that there is no God right that all these could all these people these religious people possibly be wrong you know and then He has a spiritual experience and then the obsession has been lifted from Him and who knows how His life went on but it sounds to me that He had made a decision to turn everything over to God because our next step that we're getting to we're going to go to a step that's going to ask us to make a decision to turn everything over to a power, to this power that we believe in. And we're talking everything over, right? Not just the drugs and the alcohol, but everything over it. Everything over to God. And is your God able to take you further in every area of your life? Is your God available to... Is this God able to forgive you? Is this guy able to have compassion and to love you and to hold you and to carry you and to wrap a hedge of protection around you. I love that though. I'm right on time because I'm done. And does this God have your best interest at heart? And that's the question you need to ask yourself. Thank you. Wow. You guys rocked it. Seriously, that is so good. Pat, alcoholic? We're going to do the questions now. And all week long, how was it thinking about what if God is nothing? And if I'm going to try to fix my internal condition with my best choices. a little scary and then what is god what if god is everything i'll leave you with this thought and then we're going to open up and what i thought we could do with the questions and see if you guys are open to this this is all everybody's meeting uh there's a bunch of questions starting with question number 14 and then it goes all the way to question was at number 20 and you know if god is everything you know what's going to happen in the areas of my friend my personal relationships my emotional nature all those then it asks some other questions so i think what i'm going to do uh with your permission is each of you could come up and share on any one of those questions okay the caveat is you got to share from your heart not your head and the reason I say that there's a couple things Leanne and Nancy you guys are so spot on and I man it's so good to listen to you guys the presence of infinite power and love that's a description of the experience we have with our higher power conscious companionship with our creator so the wording around this relationship that we're forming is one of love, concern companionship, power strength, protection is there anyone in here that would not be willing to at least explore that is a possibility of where this doing the rest of these steps is going to take us good not a hand went up i agree so what i'm going to say again before we go into the questions is please reaffirm to yourself tonight there's a huge pressure on you internally from the old self saying enough of this 10 weeks i've had enough thank you very much i think i'm just going to find a reason not to go Easter's coming up I'll just go to church I'll do something up and then there's the vacation up and I got a conflict on Tudor up it all of a sudden you're missing three or four weeks and you catch it next time don't do it to yourself we commit yourself to the rest of this work can I have everybody put their hand up that are willing to do that? Cool. That's important. All right, no more babble. Come on up. The floor is open. The mic. Drop the mic now. Drop the mike now. My name is Eric, and I'm an alcoholic and an addict. I'm not scared of what I've been through in my experience with God in my life because I've done a lot of things and I've gone through Christianity, I've went through Islam, and I've searched for God for a long time and I'm not going to lie I have tapped into that power before and I am not scared of anything I've been through and actually I made a note here when she said something Nancy, I had to write it down it was like seeing the matrix so she said how are you sober and sitting in this room what happened and I got dizzy for a second like oh my god i'm sitting in this fucking room i'm five and a half months sober it's stupid i do this every time and i didn't do it you know i didn'y do it the shit that brought me here it's incredible i mean i'm amazed but um anyway can i just answer two questions one one says if god is nothing the other one says god is everything if god has nothing i'm fucked i don't want to even begin to start to rebuild my life again i can't fathom much if any success um if god is everything it's on and cracking bitch that's what i'm saying i mean it's going down because i know that god has brought me so far in my life in the past and then i took back control like oh i got this now and i fucking went right downhill um and are you full of fear So much so that I'm afraid of how much I'm Afraid of If God is nothing, if God is everything God doesn't give us the spirit of fear but of power and of love And of a sound mind And that's straight out of some scripture that I know And that I have always Carried with me so that's what I have Thank you Rodney Alcoholic And I would like to answer The same question If God Is nothing Everything is meaningless and dark. The thought makes me feel uncomfortable and empty. No direction, no meaning. I'm just a mass of atoms assembled for no good reason going nowhere. And nothing is worth the trouble then. If God is everything, there is joy, an internal happiness and light. Meaning, purpose, relationships, love, worship, prayer, and faith. An internal peace and the feeling I am never alone. Awesome. Heather's coming up. My name is Heather Alkoholic. I just have to also say hi to Rodney he's not here tonight but I just wanted to show that so when he listens tomorrow so my answers are basically the same for all of these questions like when it came to the end of my drinking I was having some of those questions you know like that Leanne had mentioned earlier about like if there's a God, like what has He done for me or like how could He let me feel this way how could he let these things happen to me you know and i was really jaded and i was like there is no god you know and um so everything to me was like if there's no god then what's the point you know and so i was it like i need to like what's the point of living you know so i was at like death like that was my choice it was like death or there had to be something else So if God is everything, which I'm finding here in AA, is that anything is possible. And that includes having full access to the sunlight of the Spirit, which means I can repair any relationships, no matter how broken. I can have infinite love available to me to share with anyone, everyone, anybody that I come in contact with, whether I know them or not. And that, to me, makes life worth living. Awesome. I think I'm going to travel through these answers real quick. What's the first one? 14? I'm gonna go from 1 into 2, through my questions. I thought self-sufficiency was the key to solving most human problems aside from grief and loss. It's called adulting, and I've just figured out I was a disabled adult who couldn't grow up, that I needed to learn how to get right, and in the meantime suffered around and relied on other people. I didn't know God was an alternative. um are you unhappy if god is nothing i don't know what my life would be like without this program it's the only happiness i've ever known clean without it i'm typically unhappy or crazy then go back to the synthetic ease if god has everything i wrote look this program is the only place i found happiness within without something or someone as an instrument if this program is my happy place and this program is god then thank you god and then the last thing i was going to do is uh do you agree god either is or he isn't what is your choice to be god has to be everything otherwise i got nothing and shit will not change this is the last house in the block and it's god's house and it seems like a really beautiful and peaceful place like leanne said there's a party going on down here love and celebration the best party ever not like a silly birthday party where everyone is weirdly excited that everyone's a year older it's like celebrating true love and salvation that's a real party huh There's a crap out of me every time I share. My name is Vince. I'm an alcoholic. So number 18, do you agree God either is or he isn't? I wrote God either his or his isn't. There is no middle ground. there's no sort of God. And what is your choice to be? I wrote, I believe I made the choice 15 years ago when I first got sober and came into AA. I do have a power greater than myself. Then I wrote three questions. I wrote how great is this power? Am I willing to call that power of God now or later? My friend who's taking me through this said, gently suggested I should right on these questions which was helpful but yeah it's like this this kind of like breaking down a wall for me you know that's one of the reasons why I started coming to this even though 15 years sober it's still a journey I guess a difficult journey my sponsor who just moved to Utah I was talking to him about this and he said that it took him 17 years and I thought he had gotten God right away the way he was with the program everything so um you know it's It's almost like I don't know if there's a God in my life and I just haven't recognized it or identified it, but that's where I am right now with this question. And that's why I'm here, I'm still looking. That's honest. So thank you. I always hit the damn thing and every time I come up here I'm gonna say I'm not gonna hit the thing really loud I do it every time because I think really clearly until I stand right here then all the fucking thoughts go out the window but I can really relate to the last gentleman as you guys know I shared with you before like God was my sworn enemy for the majority of my life um and so I did a lot of thinking about this uh you know went to church did a lot things did a little bit a lot of things, and it had dawned on me that I've been fighting God. Fuck, I hate hearing my voice. I don't want to punch myself in the face. I know how you guys listen to it, but anyways. So I realized that, you know, I've been fighting god for so many years, but he's never fought me back. And then I was thinking about well why do i associate all of the what i think are bad things and as we know good and bad um depends on who's viewing it but why do I associate all the bad things with God and God's doing but I don't give him the same credit for all the good things I consider all the good things i did it all the Bad Things it's God's fault you know so so um I started thinking about that. And then I'm also the kind of guy where I'm like, well, I need you to show me, prove to me that you exist. You know, show up as a cat that tells me you're God. If a cat walked right here and said, I am God, I'd be on Craigslist with a motherfucking talking cat trying to sell it. Do you see what I'm saying? That's how I am. Like that wouldn't be enough. That still wouldn't be enough. Am I right? Because I have had the signs, and I continue to have the signs. But yet, I still have that resistance. And I just wanted to share this. I love flowers. That's right. I'm a straight man that loves flowers. But there's flowers in particular like tulips and poppies and hibiscus. You know how they close up at night? Most of the women know what I'm talking about. The flowers close up by night. And do you know why they close up at night I'm gonna tell you why I'm going to tell you why Charles Darwin says because I did a lot of believe my brains I have so many pages of brainstorming shit Charles Darwin says that the possibility is it's to reduce the risk of freezing there's other leading scientists that say it's the conserve energy or perhaps their odor so the the pollinators can get it in the morning there's another group of researchers this is they closed to prevent pollen from becoming wet with do another theory is it's to defense against nocturnal predators so do you know what all of these have in common nobody knows why the fuck the flowers close at night right but but they do the flowers have an innate intelligence they have an underlying intelligence that nobody can explain but yet I want to know all the answers I'm gonna know why I wanna know the answer answers but we can't even explain why the flowers close at night and I'm a human being and I expect God to give me all the answers right now like this so it's allowed me to step back and maybe think maybe I don't maybe maybe I am unable to understand all the answer is right now and it's helped me to to to let go of some of that anger some of their resistance some of the prejudice thank my name's Steven I'm an addict and do you seem unable to be a real help to other people if God is nothing love what Pat was saying that I could force my ideas and my way or the highway and it doesn't prove to be very useful in my professional and personal life but if God is everything I know that I've learned from this study this workshop that if you apply yourself you can have a message of depth and weight that you can actually impact others and I don't know but it may be even inspire but the way that I shared the other day on Saturday morning at a meeting when people go no you know I'm 133 days from a relapse and I said you know this disease is a three-parted animal you know mind body and spirit obviously you've got us you know a spiritual sickness cut you off you know you cut yourself off all I know is that it's really cliche but I live the steps and if you go through this work you'll understand it I get up in the morning and I say yep I'm unmanageable so I know there's a power greater than me and I'm gonna sit down and now I'm going to turn it over and start doing some prayers you know look at four look at all the shit i've done to other people five you know turn it over to god and just you know help me six shortcomings seven relieve me of the shortcomings eight look at the list of people i've harmed nine going out and do that ten continue and on a daily basis of uh hey i apologize for schooling you over being mean to you today. You know, 11 prayer meditation. I love the flutes. That's beautiful. The flute music in the beginning and prayers every morning, you know, and trying to keep that serenity prayer close to me on a daily basis throughout the day. Cause otherwise I think I'm going to choke the shit out of someone. And then 12 is reaching out. Uh, yeah. And 12 is preaching out to someone texting my sponsor going out to breakfast with him the other day calling my buddy one of my other support group friends you know helping another person through these steps and I'm living what they say it's supposed to do in this book you know and it's not me just like he said you know I had I have a bunch of stuff going on at work you know thousands of dollars out of my savings account you know they say you can we flooded a house and uh from a little drip that nobody saw for seven days come in and there's mold in the garage they said you know you just had a flood in january you want to put another one through on an insurance claim you might not get renewed oh crap okay so i know that's going to be about five grand then one of my other employees rear-ended someone that's 2500 bucks to fix a little 20 year old minivan back door then my trucks were broken into and i had to spend about 2500 more dollars on buying replacing the guy's tools you know and then my dad and stepmom said man there's a i hope you get rid of that dark cloud soon i'm going it's just life because it's not the dark cloud it's you know if god is everything that's not a dark cloud that's just the shit i have to go through being a successful business owner and go out there and train and install pipes and stuff today instead of doing billing instead of dealing estimates to get more work and um if the guy doesn't appreciate it Then it's just, I find another guy that will be able to do the job. And once again, it's like, I'm blessed beyond belief. So thanks for letting me share. I'm Matt, I am an alcoholic and a drug addict. I think this is one of my favorite assignments in this work. Really the most powerful. because what it does for me is it um gives me a chance to like sit with my where i'm at like spiritually internally and it also gives me an opportunity to like reflect on where i came from spiritually and like where i can go which could be really bad and it for for me what it for me what it doesn't like because i have a tendency to forget how much god's done for me in my life when i see where i am now to where i was before it's a powerful like experience to see because I know from my experience that the years of trying to like make myself feel better inside nothing on my own could ever make me feel better I never I just did a horrible job and um and just never felt better so when I sit like the one I really all of them were cool like to sit with but to sit there are you full of fear and sit there if God's nothing if there's no God and I'm not working this program not doing anything what would my life look like and how would I experience life and I know my life and all my actions if they're guided with fear relationships broken bad decisions misunderstanding you know it'd be just a matter of time before the drink or the drug sounds really good and for me it's probably not gonna be too long without that I'm probably gonna go for it pretty quickly because I'm in a lot of trouble I'm also not good with pain for too long of a period of time um but on the flip side of that when i see like how much further do i believe god can take me if i can learn to let go in certain areas of my life it's like it gets me really excited because it's not like for me um the flipside of that is not living free of fear but the flip side ofthat is pushing myself to the edge of what where god can takeme through that fear and what can what my life can be like on the other side ofthattrusting that there's going to be something more for me and that's where it comes into that that's where the real fun starts and you start having different experiences in different areas of your life that you're like wow is this fucking amazing or what like work or whatever relationships not really good yet maybe I'm going to have a different experience this time through with that but like a lot of areas have changed drastically in my life relationships too, I shouldn't say that so I am looking forward to getting into it and doing more This is good. Good. Good ones. Hi, I'm Tammy and I'm an alcoholic. Hey everybody. Um, when I came in here, I was afraid of living. I was scared of dying. I didn't know how to do either one. The loony bin sounded pretty good to me. but I work in the mental health field, so it doesn't look good on my resume. So I decided, and the funny thing is I got sober in this little tiny town in southern Illinois with two meetings a day right across the street from my office. And I would look at them and take their inventory. They're smoking, laughing, drinking coffee. I'm like, who the fuck are those people? So happy. Oh, they know they're drunks? And then I would go on my lunch hour and buy a bottle of vodka and put it in the trunk of my car so I could have it when I got home. And I didn't see the connection at all. and obviously I wasn't a very good mental health worker but um I still do that same kind of work but um it's my first meeting I went there I don't even know what it was and when you said that God picks her sobriety date I'm not sure what it Was there was no DUI there was no legal consequence I just really thought I was losing my mind and I walked across the room to the to there and they passed around a 24-hour coin and they all said a prayer on I mean a really long prayer and I'm like damn it I'm in a Unitarian Church how are they doing all this religious stuff I thought I was safe but um they were saying prayers on it and I didn't believe in the power of prayer at that time but when they handed it back to me I really felt like I had God sitting in my hand it was just like the most I still have that coin and it's been almost 19 years and I haven't taken a drink and this is the fourth time I've been through this work and i need to do it even more and so when god is everything like both my boys are almost teenagers i never go in their room because it's but last night i snuck in there in the middle of the night just to watch them sleep because they weren't talking and it was nice and they weren'T stinky they were just like being quiet and but just looking at them like god that'S so miracle. How am I a mom? How am I, do I have a job? How do I have what I have? How did I not kill somebody? How Did I not? How did that happen? That's all. That's all God. And I get like survivors go like, why did we get it? And other people didn't know one of my immediate family is sober and I don't know why, but I'm very, very happy. I did. Thanks. patrick alcoholic um yeah uh with having uh god being nothing i've gotten myself to the point where um i'm going to the bankruptcy attorney on monday um the women in my life so i don't like love them on an intimate level so i have like no love life to speak of and um And the drugs that I took, like, I would just take any drug that was available that would make me feel better, and they don't make me feeling better anymore. So I'm, like totally screwed, and I have nowhere to go. And I was just going to go a long life living that way, but I happened to pick a sponsor who did the BBA work and did these steps the BPA way that he said. and somehow God entered my life, and I'm living a moral life. I haven't drank or used antidepressants or any type of drug for... In May it'll be like two years, and I've been... And I'm not having sexual flings anymore. I haven'T had sex in more than a year and a half. And I pray and meditate every day, and I don't do sinful stuff and it's because I'm just open to letting God run my life and turn things around for me. So that's where I'm at. Nice, nice job everybody. Patrick, I got to tell you I had all sorts of thoughts when you were talking. I just did. I got some goats at the house if you I'm just joking Leanne just was going to shoot me here all good buddy oh man ok first thing back on a lighter note I do have five goats they're very nice they're all great alright assignment for next week alright assignment 12 and this is important yeah it's recorded isn't it oh my gosh sorry oh wow okay progress retro Santa Fe where the men are and the goats are scared oh gosh okay assignment 12 for next week and this is important you're we're going to be doing we're in now how it works okay so your assignment 12 you are going to do um in the bba you're put everything in your big book uh bba book from pages 46 to 52 in your Big Book okay and that's going to take us all the way through the third step till you stop when it says next we launched okay on page 63 at the very bottom but what is important and what my sponsor had me do and i do every time i'm at this step it's it's really important that every day you read this step okay so i want you reading this step from 60 to 63 right after the abcs i want need to be reading in the first person so instead of it it's not going to be we or them or those guys it's going to pat pat did this pat did that as an example um let's see here bottom of page 60 is an example pat is an actor who wants to run the whole show is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery, and the rest of the players in Pat's own way, okay? So you want to turn it personal, and you want to say it out loud so that you can get sort of upfront and close and personal with that part of the step work, okay, really important. And then we're going to close off here, but I want to read something really fast. All self-centered persons when self-frustration begins to set in will probably turn toward themselves in self-pity. They will feel that life is hard on them and they will blame everything except themselves a case in point a brilliant woman had a nervous breakdown for no reason other than she lived in the state of constant self-reference self-centeredness if you will mauled over in herself and then turned into self-pity those who tried to change her attitudes were persecuting her that was her attitude her life was all jammed up and the one key log in the jam was self-centeredness had she pulled that log out which she couldn't which we can't god can um had she changed her center from herself to god the whole inner clogged up condition would have broken loose and she would have been cleansed and released just a thought Okay, let's close and... Wait, we're going to bring candles for next week because we're going to take a third step? Yes. And Pat, are we going to have them read this to people every day between now and next week? Yeah. So on page 25 of the Idiot's Guide is what I just referenced in terms of the third step, reading in the first person. And find somebody, your step buddy and read this to them every day back and forth alright let's do it and then who would like to bring dinner next week we got it whoa and they're not egg rolls what am I freaking what do you want yeah absolutely and then And then how about for snacks? Anyone want to bring snacks, like dessert? Anybody have for snacks. Rich in the back. Great. Okay. And then real quick. So we are taking a third step together next week. So everybody bring a candle. Okay. Bring a candle Great. And Matt, you're going to make an announcement about Friday night meeting real quick and then we're going close off in the what prayer? Seventh? Serenity prayer? Let's do serenity. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, just real quick. We have a Big Book Awakenings meeting on Friday night up in Escondido that's really struggling for support. It's at the Fellowship Center. So we have a lot of guys and women that are newly sober, but we don't have a whole lot of people that have experience going through the work. So if you guys are available Friday night to come up and you want to speak or just come up And show up and share, it would be very much appreciated, especially if you live up that way. We have flyers, and I'll leave them up front if you have meetings that you go to. um just you can leave them out but we need support up there and there's a lot of guys that you know could benefit from sponsorship or hearing what we have to say kids yeah you could bring your kids up sure yeah yeah yeah you can bring your kids up so i just wanted to announce that thanks excellent thank you let's close off let's grab a chair circle yeah circle There you go. All right, it's right here. We're going to say the serenity prayer. God, grant me serenety to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Amen. Stay! All right. Good. I'll help you here next week. I'll find out for you soon. Yeah, I thought I'd talk to you about that. Yeah, me too.